Fenway Park may be the smallest stadium in baseball, but it's had an outsized impact for public health over the past two months.
Usually in hibernation from its primary operations over winter months, Fenway opened its doors at the end of January to serve as the second mass vaccination site in Massachusetts. Since a soft launch on Jan. 29, more than 55,000 people were given a vaccine for COVID-19.
On Saturday night, CIC Health, the company running the vaccination site, recognized its final patient to get a vaccine at Fenway. Like so many of those before her, Frannie Chan received a button on her way out: "I got vaccinated at Fenway Park."
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In all, 56,228 people were vaccinated at the site, according to CIC Health. The park is being replaced by the Hynes Convention Center, since the Red Sox will begin their regular season with Opening Day at Fenway on Thursday, April 1.
The ballpark, which started out giving around 500 doses of vaccine a day, hit 10,000 total vaccinations on Feb. 16, and continued to accelerate the pace over the subsequent six weeks.
By the end, capacity had reached 1,500 shots a day — a rate Hynes Convention Center is expected to meet, and eventually far exceed to as high as 5,000 doses a day, depending on supply from the federal government.
"The bottom line was the fundamental purpose of Fenway Park is to provide a place to practice and play baseball," Gov. Charlie Baker said earlier in March, when the enddate for vaccines was announced. "From our point of view, the Hynes was a more permanent solution we could use on a go-forward basis,."
